I fly a lot. Mercifully, not as much as your typical road warrior type, but enough where I’ve developed a routine on travel days. If it’s a good weather day, then I’ll hear the pilot announce, “We’ll be cruising at 33,000 ft. and expect clear skies all the way to our destination.” And if there’s lots of clouds? There’s auto-pilot, air traffic control and radar available to do some of the heavy lifting. That got me to thinking.

Aren’t we told, “The best things in life are free”? When tasked with picking up our “4 Cs of Quality Monitoring Tools” series. I knew the next topic to cover was “Cost” and the aforementioned quote immediately popped into my head.